Board Introduction, by Robert H. Moore, 11 July 2000

Board Introduction,
by Robert H. Moore,
11 July 2000

Last modified 09 Feb 2001, 21:04-0500

Poster's notes are in italics. Brackets that are not in italics are in the original. This document, received as a series of notes in all upper case, was edited with regard to format and case, but not content, except that one obvious spelling error was corrected.

April 18 letter from a concerned group of UUCF members.
Constituted poll of congregational issues & concerns.
Those 19 of us who sent the April congregational mailing had no way of predicting responses.
Letter was written after months of dialogue with various board members and our senior minister were not productive.
As one example, I will share with you some brief excerpts from a letter I wrote to Jim Nelson following a two-hour lunch meeting on April 11.
In part, the essence of the letter was:
I have reflected on your comments about your ministry. I am now writing to share my reflections on what you said. I understand that you do not choose to use the pulpit to welcome and encourage the expression of diverse religious views. However, it would be healthy for to hear your thoughts on spiritual paths other than your own.
I appreciate your candor in acknowledging you are moving UUCF away from the Ralph Stutzman model of introspection, individualism and small autonomous groups to a large church model of top down direction, central leadership and group commitment.
I also appreciate your candor in saying that you are not interested in reconciliation with those who prefer the Ralph Stutzman approach, but rather you are making clear what their choices are---accept the large church model or go elsewhere. In adopting this approach, I cautioned Jim, you may be running the very great risk of losing many valuable, long-time UUCF members.
As you mentioned, it is a bit daunting to be a minister of a large church when UUA has not prepared you and many of your colleagues for your jobs. I recall you telling me last year that Kathe said you should have been a CEO. In light of this, it is understandable that your management approach is to consolidate ministerial influence and power and to emphasize top-down authority. However, I worry that this approach makes it difficult to develop large constituencies to support church initiatives.
(Copies of my original letter are available to any board member who requests it.)

Such views from Jim, candidly and plainly expressed, led me to sign the subsequent congregational letter.
As we have discussed with some of you, the April 18 letter was not an effort to convince or persuade.
It also should be noted---many of us have been strong supporters of Jim Nelson in previous times.
The April 18 letter sought to determine if there were others at UUCF who felt so strongly about the issues that they agreed the time had come to seek objective professional help in addressing congregational conflicts.
For 101 members and 19 friends to have signed a request for objective, outside assistance is no small matter.
Many who are known to have signed have been sharply criticized, snubbed and suffered other indignities from those who do not appreciate dissent or upsetting the status quo.
Many others who do business with people in the church or who have been here for decades and who are not comfortable to be labeled as dissidents have expressed support to us privately.
As you will see from our comments tonight, the congregational conflicts we are citing cut across various levels of UUCF activity.
It is our understanding that in UUA parlance what we are seeking might be best described as "conflict management"; so we will use this term interchangeably with "mediation."
The 120 individuals who are requesting outside conflict management assistance represent a diverse range of people, as do those of us who are here tonight.
As many of you know, we are longtime, committed members who have given extensively of our time, treasure and talent to UUCF.
Some of the conflict areas where we believe outside assistance is needed include:
- Inconsistent pastoral care from the senior minister.
- Usurpation of board's powers and prerogatives.
- Continuing pattern of discontent within UUCF despite significant congregational turnover.
- Devaluing of older, long-time members, their views, and Contributions, They have been advised, get over it, times Have changed!
- Underlying causes of [declining membership] and essentially flat income growth from 1994 to 1999.
- Demonizing those who are opposed to the status quo.
- Setting up a us against them, winners vs. losers dynamic.
- Using bogus parity arguments to give ministers extraordinary [salary] raises.
- Failure to nurture spiritual diversity in congregation.
- Underlying causes for failure to pay UUA fair share.
- Mismanagement of UUCF ministerial scholarship fund.
- Failure of past boards to follow up their own Ombudsman's Report recommendations.
- Issues of senior minister's job performance reviews, work schedule, and response to those he views as not supportive of him.
- Issues of to whom the senior minister is accountable and how this accountability is carried out.
Some of these matters will be touched on tonight and others would be amplified during the process of working with an objective, outside, UUA conflict management professional.
We believe the end result of UU conflict management assistance will be to strengthen our various ministries and our congregation as a caring diverse community.
It is our hope that we can work with the board of trustees to accomplish this.
We recognize the board has the power to disregard our request for mediation/conflict management.
Regrettably, we believe the senior minister will resist the call for an objective outside UUA conflict manager with every fiber of his being.
Nevertheless, we hope the board will be responsive to the requests of over 100 of their fellow members and friends.
We ask---what is there to fear from an objective, outside facilitator helping us to honestly address issues and concerns?
We hope the board will be committed to the democratic principles of inclusion and respect for diverse opinions.
We appreciate the board's consideration in giving us a one-hour presentation time tonight.

Thank you very much.